Early Taste Of Winter For Northern & Eastern Europe As Strong Scandinavian Block Develops

Written by on October 5, 2015 in Autumn 2015, Rest of Europe, United Kingdom & Ireland with 0 Comments

Well I hope you enjoyed that lovely settled spell because we’re back to a more typical wet and windy regime starting today. Rain spreads northwards in two bands today and accompanying this will be strong winds. This system clears and it’s followed by another Tuesday-Wednesday but there is signs this is a short-lived change. High pressure looks to return from Scandinavia late weekend into the weekend.

In recent weeks northerly blocking highs have become common, especially as we entered autumn. A -NAO pattern has dominated the past summer and now that it’s October and warmest waters are between Greenland and Norway, so we’re seeing the atmosphere respond. As we’re now seeing, the same setup in summer is behaving differently now that winter is approaching. Here’s hoping this trend continues.

Through late August and much of September, strongest heights have shifted northward allowing areas which saw the cool, wet summer to have some decent weather, i.e UK and Scandinavia. This setup gave the hot zone of Spain, France into central Europe a break from heat and drought with a colder, wetter pattern.

As we progress through this week, the models are solidly indicating the development of another strong Scandinavian blocking high that will build westwards into the UK. At this time of year, this setup brings the first taste of winter underneath the high as winds blow straight from Siberia where snow cover begins to settle.

snowNESDISnh(4)

This setup once again brings to return to wet, windy, stormy weather again for Iberia eastwards across the Med and southern Europe as the jet splits, directly one branch north and the other south.

After a brief positive, the NAO and AO is going back negative.

nao_fcst

ao_fcst

This setup with building heights to the north may be interesting with an increasingly chilly easterly flow developing but let’s look deeper, what’s this overall pattern telling us? Is this a hint at our winter pattern? That remains to be seen but I am confident that over the next week to 10 days, Scandinavia and eastern, possibly central parts of Europe whom have witnessed a long, dry August may be seeing the arrival of winter first with early season SIBERIAN air blowing in along with the first snows. Quite the flip.

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Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Here’s the latest run of the GFS surface and notice how Joaquin is pushed back by this strengthening high.

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Now let’s look at the GFS ensemble 5-day mean 500mb height anomalies.

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Broader view shows the Scandinavian and Greenland high linking up.

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

gefs-hgt--world-360-A-500hgtanom_5d_white

Check out the chill this blocking high pulls in underneath.

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Credit: AccuWeather Pro

Now this is an upper air pattern we want to see this winter. Looks a lot like the SST analog forecast for Dec-Feb doesn’t it.

cahgt_anom_2(8)

Quite often, a long lived trend or pattern will live on from one season into the next. In other words as time goes on, there’s an increasing likelihood that the setup we’ve seen during the summer on into the autumn the -NAO and cooler than normal trend for the UK will extend into the winter months.

We saw a -NAO in summer and autumn 2009 with return to positive late November and through the first half of December (this built the cold reservoir across the arctic) and then it flipped again and the strat warming released all the cold down into the mid-latitudes near Christmas. Put it this way, I really like what the atmosphere is doing right now and like the longer term trends of cool and -NAO/AO.

See this morning’s video for the discussion.

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